DETROIT – Ford Motor Co. is likely to engineer and design its new rear-wheel-drive cars in the United States.

“The vehicles that we're looking at will be designed where they're engineered, and those global rear-wheel-drive platform vehicles will be engineered here in the United States, as far as I know,” said J Mays, Ford group vice president of design.

Ford executives have confirmed that rear-wheel-drive vehicles for Ford and Lincoln are in the company's product plan. They probably will come out in the next three to five years, said Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, at the Detroit auto show.

Although Ford is gathering input on the platform from its operations around the globe, Mays said the lead team probably will be in Dearborn, Mich.

Ford executives have said they could build rear-drive vehicles using a platform being developed by Ford's Australian operation. But the rear-drive cars are not likely to be produced in Australia because of shipping costs and exchange rates, they said.

The approach, Mays said, is similar to Ford's decision to assign the design and development of global small cars to Europe.

“Small cars are Europe's expertise and have been for the last 30 years,” he said. “Big cars, America's usually been pretty good at, when they do it right.”

Ford showed interest in rear-drive cars at the 2007 Detroit auto show with the Ford Interceptor and Lincoln MKR concepts. The production vehicles will be based on the proportions used in those concepts, Mays said.

“It's going to be such a piece of cake now that we've got the proportions,” he said. “And that was the important issue.”

But the Ford-brand model won't look like the Interceptor, Mays said.

“It will have a more dynamic exterior styling,” he said.

Though the Interceptor was “a really nice car,” it had “slightly more static energy,” Mays said. With its upright lines and slab sides, there was no wedge to its shape.

“It's quite like an extruded sausage in many ways,” Mays said of the Interceptor. “Once we get into the actual programs, you have to kind of balance the extruded sausage with something that's more dynamic in nature. And then we'll send them into market research and see where we come out.”